Chinese New Year (of the Pig) Lion dance & Olympia’s Tai-Chi/Kung-Fu club. The club’s Kung-Fu style is Hung-Gar southern style form.
The program was sponsored by the Friends of the Olympia Timberland Library.
Olympia Timberland Library (TRL.ORG), 313 8th Ave SW, (360)352-0595 amicuscuria.com/wordpress
RE: Adversary Proceeding #: 9:11-ap-01252-RR U.S. Bankruptcy Court Central District of California (Santa Barbara)
Jimmy altered his name to be harder to track? His family’s chemical corporation spells it Matteson’—Score another one for the artful dodger.
James Grover Mateson (aka: Jimmy, Big Spender; dob: 11-22-61; 611 Capitol Way S, #506, Olympia, WA 98501) likes to be known as the fabulously privileged straight white patriarch with a conscience and penchant for social/racial justice. The truth falls a wee bit short of that self aggrandizement. Jimmy (and coconspirator Alan Crutchfield of Imverse Asia Inc.), it seems, has a history of taking other peoples money/property and not paying them back. His bankruptcy filed circa 2011 left him sans portfolio, in breach of contract, and under a cloud of officially lodged allegations such as: willful and malicious injury, false pretenses, false representation, actual fraud ($270,000), fraud as fiduciary, embezzlement, larceny, and implicitly unjust enrichment. Where the social justice lies in that equation is left to the reader’s imagination.
It would appear the Big Spender is spent, has hidden his assets, enthusiastically embraced sham corporations as a tool to fleece his flock and misappropriate the commons. Tom Nogler was right when he characterized this man as a fast talker–smooth talking fast walking mohair Jim. He’s now in the midst of Olympia and a fresh crop of suckers. Still, it must sting just a little to be reduced to picking the bones of Media Island instead of the corpulent bodies of his accustomed high rollers. Bon Appetit, Jimmy.
Perhaps the banks won’t notice the details of your bankruptcy when you try to float that $70,000 loan on the back of the Media Island house you never intend to pay back? But anybody with common sense would steer well clear of you–hence your specialty in coaxing $ from those without any. Fools and their money is the name of your game. But now we get to witness Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman–Soapy Smith in the 21st Century! Paper Moon and Mournful Meek, you’re an epilogue cut strait from a chapter of Con Men, Strumpets, And Smoothies. Got a bridge you can sell us?
MATESON CHEMICAL Ripoff Reports, Complaints, Reviews, Scams, Lawsuits and Frauds Reported
Jimmy seems married to the idea of using his 501(c)3 corporation (MI) and its assets effectively as his personal piggy bank, the IRS and the state might feel compelled to reexamine its tax status, now and heretofore. PLUS, there’s essentially no statute of limitations on bankruptcy fraud. Moreover, there is evidence of an IRS tax lien against Jimmy which the Thurston County Auditor records payment toward in excess of $17,000. Big Spender’s IRS tax lien
Mateson Chemical take my family company from me and misrepresent facts to tie me in litigation/ hasn’t sent me any w2’s or any company earnings or loss statement for the past 12 yrs. although I am a shareholder.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I am the executrix of this ongoing Estate of Jean F. Mateson. My father left a company all all of the assets from his lifetime in his company. He died in 1992 and I have been pursuing a re evaluation of this estate since then. I have documentation and referenced to documents that no assets of any value were included in the VALUE. This would encompass trademarks, formulas and all intellectual property rightfully belonging to the “heirs” The present ‘President” has singlehandedly managed to terrorize all of the other owners into accepting some kind of pay off.
They are listed, as my sister as a Director or the Vice President, but has pursued many other careers since then and admits she hasn’t had anything to do with the present operations, although I understand she receives compensation and full benefits from the company. I have terrorized by this now president and his ” high paid attorney”. They have done everything to me including to and not limited to terrorizing my attorney, who was just asking for the simple treatment and respect for me as a shareholder. They put together a law suit bring suit against me for frivolous things that occurred during the operations of the estate, whereby I was trying to expose the criminal behavior in the final estimate of the estate. (I have all documents to back up my statements)The now President is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to terrorize me, without the courtesy of any financials or allowing me access to property I am part owners to. The 1025 East Montgomery Ave. Phil. Pa. every time I try to gain access they have called the police and filed against me once again frivolous law suits. ( I have not received any financials about the company and am denied any access to the books and records) I REFUSED TO DO MY TAXES WITHOUT MY RECORDS AND DON’T BELIEVE I SHOULD. No records ever supplied to me! I am presently FILED in The Supreme Court of Appeals asking to be heard on the true merits of my case. I have been denied due process in the lower courts because I believe the Judge is involved. As I have been told by a large amount of lawyers this Attorney is ” wired” to this judge. Can you imagine in this century we are denied access to the court system to be heard, because the other PARTY IS USING YOUR MONEY TO KEEP YOU TIED UP IN LITIGATION UNJUSTLY! This needs to be exposed and this guy running my company needs to be put in jail. He has also threatened the lives of anyone who gets involved including a CPA as I was told!I am presently unemployed and have asked for assistance to help pay my bills, why in this free world is this “person” allowed to continue driving the most expensive cars, buying million dollar homes and I am passed off and threatened if I try and get what belongs to me? I need help exposing this “fraud”!Stephanie Wilmington, Delaware U.S.A.
*UPDATE Employee: Setting the record straight on behalf of the company.
SUBMITTED: Wednesday, September 17, 2008Re: Report # 359790 Hello. If you are reading this, you have been exposed to a letter written by a woman named Stephanie. The purpose of our letter is to set the record straight on behalf of Mateson Chemical Corporation (MCC), its stockholders, employees, clients, and vendors. Firstly, be assured that MCC is the same solid company we always have been. We are an environmentally minded organization with a strict policy of integrity and ethics. This is where the problems with Stephanie began. Stephanie was fired from MCC for cause in late 1997. She had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from the company. At the time, she was an owner of company stock, along with her brothers and sister, in a closely held family business. That meant she had stolen money from her own company and her own family. The system worked; she was caught, fired and our business went on seamlessly. There were no criminal charges filed. Stephanie no longer owns stock in MCC as she claims in her writings pursuant to the findings of the case to which she refers. She simply has retained voided stock certificates because she continues to evade the Wilmington Sheriff’s Department charged to retrieve them, as verified by their reports. She is no longer an executrix for the estate of J.F. Mateson either, because the estate was closed and settled by her and her family with all needed signatures, including hers, in the early 1990’s. If the estate were not closed, she and her family would have not had stock to begin with. The company is now more diversified in ownership and steps have been taken to safeguard the future stability of the company stock. It is true that we have spent a lot of money on legal and court fees to defend ourselves against Stephanie’s legal onslaughts. We would much rather have put those lost funds into employee pay increases or retirement accounts. We were forced to effectively respond to the frivolous lawsuits she and her lawyers have been able to conjure up as a cost of doing business. We have settled this matter over and over in the courts, as evidenced by each successive ruling. We noticed Stephanie did not use names in the text of her writing. Her lawyers probably incorrectly told her it was not defamatory that way. We will be following up on that with proper legal action immediately. We at MCC accept our duty to the future, for our clients, ownership, employees, and vendors to defend our company from outside malevolent factors, as all companies do. This report seems to be a reaction of an obviously disturbed individual, still bitter about her justified termination almost 12 years ago. Be assured MCC, its employees, and, or its vendors have not been involved in any payoffs to stockholders or judges as she alleges. There have been no threats to our CPA (President of the CPA ethics division), no fraud, and no terrorizing of anyone either. These claims are untrue and have been written simply to besmirch the good name of MCC. We can only assume that her report is borne out of frustration, due to her own unethical and illegal actions in the past. We also suggest she go ahead and file her taxes. She has received all the information and documentation she needs in a timely manner to file her taxes, as all our employees have. In closing we would like to reiterate that Mateson Chemical Corporation is doing fine and its product lines are still the ultimate in quality, performance, and value. Please feel free to see for yourself at www.matesonchemical.com.
*UPDATE Employee: Mateson Chemical Vindicated BY COURT RULING
AUTHOR: Attorney For Mateson Chemical – (U.S.A.)
SUBMITTED: Monday, September 08, 2008 The ridiculous article written by Stephanie under report 359790 has been deemed by the appellate court in Pennsylvania to be totally false. (This decison was entered under docket number July term 2005 , number 1180 and affirmed by the appellate court under Superior court docket 2237 EDA 2007. These judicial opinions are public record and were not quoted by Stephanie as she intended to harm this company simply because she is angry that she was fired for unlawful conduct. While she was employed by the company, funds were used by her improperly and she stole corporate records which a court ordered her to return.
The court opinion specifically stated : ” Ms Stephanie Barton wrongfully stock ledgers, the corporate seal and the official records of the Company. This will hold on without authorization. Further, the court ruled: ” she is held falsely held herself out as an officer of the Corporation. On July 26, 2005, this court granted a special injunction to remedy the results of this Barton’s wrongful conduct.
The Company will be filing a lawsuit against the author of the original article as well as anyone else who repeats this information. As the public record shows, it is unfortunate that this woman is permitted to continue to publicly state that which has already been proven by a court to be false. The title of her report itself is malicious and we intend to take a judgment against her for punitive damages to remedy or unlawful conduct.
SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE
RICHARD R. COOCH NEW CASTLE COUNTY COURTHOUSE RESIDENT JUDGE 500 North King Street, Suite 10400 Wilmington, Delaware 19801-3733 (302) 255-0664
Bruce W. McCulloch, Esquire Bodell, Bové, Grace & Van Horn, P.C. 1225 North King Street, Suite 1000 Wilmington, Delaware 19899-0397 Attorney for Plaintiff
Thomas E. Hanson, Jr., Esquire Michael J. Custer, Esquire Morris James LLP 500 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1500 Wilmington, Delaware 19899-2306 Attorneys for Defendant
Re: Mateson Chemical Corporation v. Stephanie Mateson Barton
Record No.: 07J-09-114
Submitted: November 15, 2007
Decided: January 15, 2008
On Defendant’s Motion to Stay Enforcement of Judgment.
DENIED.
Dear Counsel:
Before the Court is Stephanie Mateson Barton’s (“Defendant’s”) motion to stay enforcement of a judgment entered against her on September 7, 2007 in Delaware Superior Court, New Castle County (“the Delaware judgment.”)
The issue is whether Defendant is entitled to a stay of the Delaware judgment under the Delaware Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments.
Act, specifically 10 Del. C. § 4784(a), despite having failed to post security when she appealed the underlying Pennsylvania judgment of the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Plaintiff, Mateson Chemical Corporation, had that judgment then transferred to Delaware.
For the reasons that follow, the Court holds that Defendant is not entitled to a stay under 10 Del. C. § 4784(a) because she did not “furnish security for the satisfaction of the judgment as required by the state in which it was rendered,”1 i.e., 120% of the amount of the Pennsylvania judgment when she filed her appeal, as required by 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a). Therefore, Defendant’s motion is DENIED.
I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
On July 17, 2007, the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, entered judgment against Defendant in Mateson Chemical Corp v. Barton, et. al., (“the Pennsylvania judgment”) in the amount of $117,262.80.2 Defendant filed an appeal of the Pennsylvania judgment on August 17, 2007 to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, but did not post security when she did so.
Plaintiff then had the Pennsylvania judgment transferred to Delaware, and judgment was entered against Defendant in this Court on September 7, 2007.
On October 23, 2007, Defendant filed the present motion to stay enforcement of the Delaware judgment, citing her appeal of the Pennsylvania judgment.
II. CONTENTIONS OF THE PARTIES
Defendant contends that her appeal of the Pennsylvania judgment entitles her to a stay of the Delaware judgment under 10 Del. C. § 4784(a).3 Defendant claims that Pennsylvania law “does not require [her] to post security for satisfaction of the Pennsylvania judgment prior to appealing it to the Pennsylvania Superior Court,” 4 and asserts that she has met her burden under 10 Del. C. 4784(a). Defendant reads 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a) as only
1 10 Del. C. § 4784(a).
2 Def. Mot. to Stay Enforcement of J., Ex. A., citing Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Case No. 1180 (July, 2005).
3 Id. at 2.
4 Id.
2
requiring a defendant to post security in order to effect an automatic supersedeas. [5]
[5] Defendant raises additional arguments in her reply to Plaintiff’s response to her motion. Defendant argues that 10 Del. C. § 4784(b), and 10 Del. C. § 4782, makes Pennsylvania procedural law inapplicable, since, Defendant argues, these statutes establish that “enforcement in Delaware is governed by the procedures and defenses applicable to Delaware judgments.” Def. Reply Br., at 3-4. Defendant also argues in her reply brief that Plaintiff has not taken the necessary steps to have an executable judgment entered in Pennsylvania; namely, filing a praecipe to enter a judgment on the verdict. Id. at 4.
However, the Court will not address these arguments since they were raised for the first time in Defendant’s reply, and Defendant did not attempt to raise them at oral argument. See Thompson v. State, 2006 WL 2096440 (Del. Super.) (“[d]efendant should have raised this argument in his opening brief. The Court ignores the argument advanced in the reply brief”).
6 Pl. Answ. to Def. Mot. to Stay Enforcement of J., at 2.
7 10 Del. C. § 4784(a).
Plaintiff contends that 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a) requires an appellant to post bond in the amount of 120% of the amount of the judgment appealed from in order to prevent an execution on the judgment during the pendency of the appeal.6 Plaintiff argues that since Defendant has not done so, she has not met the requirements of 10 Del. C. § 4784(a), which requires an appellant (in the foreign jurisdiction) to show proof that the appellant “has furnished security for the satisfaction of the judgment as required by the state in which it was rendered.”7
III. STANDARD OF REVIEW
The sole question before the Court on this motion is whether Defendant is entitled a stay of judgment under 10 Del. C. § 4784(a). The statute provides the standard of review:
§ 4784. Stay.
(a) If the judgment debtor shows the court that an appeal from the foreign judgment is pending or will be taken, or that a stay of execution has been granted, the court shall stay enforcement of the foreign judgment until the appeal is concluded, the time for appeal expires, or the stay of execution expires or is vacated, upon proof that the judgment debtor has furnished security for the satisfaction of the judgment as required by the state in which it was rendered….
3
8 Kontrol Automation, Inc. v. Chesapeake Hydro, Inc., 1989 WL 124897 (Del. Super.).
9 Id. at *1.
10 Id. at *2.
11 Mansfield State Bank v. Cohen, 407 N.Y.S.2d 373 (1977).
IV. DISCUSSION
This Court has previously addressed the issue raised in this case. In Kontrol Automation, Inc. v. Chesapeake Hydro, Inc.,8 this Court also had to decide whether a judgment-debtor was entitled to a stay of execution of a Delaware judgment, despite the judgment-debtor’s having failed to post security when it appealed the underlying Pennsylvania judgment.
In Kontrol, the Court was asked by a judgment-creditor to grant relief of a stay of execution of a Delaware judgment filed against a judgment-debtor. The judgment-debtor argued that since it had filed an appeal of the underlying Pennsylvania judgment it was entitled to a stay under 10 Del. C. 4784, despite its not having posted security when filing its appeal of the Pennsylvania judgment. As in the present case, the parties disagreed as to whether an appellant/judgment-debtor had to post security under 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a) when filing an appeal.
The Kontrol court held that by failing to post security when appealing the Pennsylvania judgment, the judgment-debtor had not complied with 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a), which calls for “appropriate security in the amount of 120 per cent of the amount found due by the lower court and remaining unpaid” to be furnished by a judgment-debtor. Thus, the Kontrol court held that “§ 4784(a) [did] not apply since [the judgment-debtor] failed to furnish the necessary security bond required for an appeal in Pennsylvania [under] … Rule 1731(a) of the Pennsylvania Rules of Appellate Procedure.”9
Nonetheless, the Kontrol court allowed the judgment-debtor a stay of execution of judgment for ten days to give the judgment-debtor the “opportunity to file the necessary security for the satisfaction of the judgment as required by Pennsylvania law.”10 The court based this holding on the outcome of a New York state case, Mansfield State Bank v. Cohen11 that had been cited by both parties. In Mansfield, a Texas court had entered default judgment against an individual, and in favor of a bank. The bank then sought to enforce the judgment in New York. The Mansfield court denied the individual’s motion to stay the execution of the Texas court judgment in New York, holding that the individual had failed to file the “supersedeas bond” required by Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, and so was not entitled to a stay in New York.12 Despite so holding, but recognizing that New York courts have “taken a liberal approach to the vacating of default judgments,”13 the Mansfield court stayed execution of the New York judgment for ten days, giving the individual the opportunity to file the necessary “supersedeas bond.”14 Characterizing the Mansfield holding as “persuasive precedent,” the Kontrol court gave the same 10 day opportunity to the judgment-debtor in that case.
4
12 Id. at 375.
13 Id. at 376.
14 Id.
15 Subdivision (b) applies to domestic relations matters, which are not at issue here.
16 See, e.g., In re Meade Land & Development Co., Inc. 1 B.R. 279, 283 (Bankr., E.D. Pa. 1979) (“In appealing this final judgment, the Plaintiff has also chosen not to abide by Rule 1731 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Appellate Procedure, 42 Pa.C.S.A., as evidenced by its failure to deposit a bond with the Court in the amount of 120% of the judgment. Thus, the decision rendered by the State Court, which has not been stayed during the appeal pursuant to statutory procedure, is considered to be final and therefore provable.”).
17 Oral Arg. Tr., at 7 (November 9, 2007).
18 Id. at 7-8.
The Court declines to accept Defendant’s reading of 10 Del. C. § 4784(a) and 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a). It is clear 1) that Pennsylvania law requires a judgment-debtor to post security in order to effect a stay; and, 2) that it is within the discretion of this Court under the Delaware Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act to deny a motion for a stay of execution if a judgment-debtor has not met the requirements for a stay of execution in the foreign jurisdiction.19
This Court agrees with the Kontrol court that 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a) requires a judgment-debtor to furnish security in Pennsylvania in order to effect a stay of execution. 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a) states in pertinent part:
(a) …Except as provided by subdivision (b)[15], an appeal from an order involving solely the payment of money shall, unless otherwise ordered pursuant to this chapter, operate as a supersedeas upon the filing with the clerk of the lower court of appropriate security in the amount of 120% of the amount found due by the lower court and remaining unpaid….
The statute clearly requires a judgment-creditor to post security to effect a supersedeas.16
At oral argument counsel for Defendant acknowledged that since his client had not posted security in Pennsylvania, she is not eligible for supersedeas, automatic or otherwise, in Pennsylvania.17 Defendant’s counsel agreed with the Court’s understanding that, in Defendant’s view, “theoretically, the Plaintiff could execute on the judgment in Pennsylvania, but … [under] 10 Del. C. 4784(a) …, Plaintiff could not execute on it in Delaware.”18
5 6
19 See, e.g., 30 Am. Jur. 2d Executions, Etc. § 783 (2007) (“[a] request by a judgment debtor to stay the execution of a foreign judgment [is] properly denied where the judgment debtor, alleging that the foreign judgment was being appealed in a foreign court, failed to post the necessary bond incident to such appeal”); 30 Am. Jur. 2d Executions, Etc. § 331 (2007) (“[a] trial court does not abuse its discretion in dismissing a judgment debtor’s complaint contesting the validity of a foreign judgment if the debtor fails to post the required bond
The Court declines to accept Defendant’s reading of 10 Del. C. § 4784(a) and 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a). It is clear 1) that Pennsylvania law requires a judgment-debtor to post security in order to effect a stay; and, 2) that it is within the discretion of this Court under the Delaware Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act to deny a motion for a stay of execution if a judgment-debtor has not met the requirements for a stay of execution in the foreign jurisdiction.19
Nor does the Court find any reason to go beyond the plain wording of the statute by granting any additional time, such as ten days, to Defendant to post security in Pennsylvania, and, to this limited extent, this Court declines to follow Kontrol’s grant of a ten day period in which to allow the judgment-debtor to post security in the foreign jurisdiction.
The Court holds that Defendant is not entitled to a stay under 10 Del. C. § 4784(a) because she failed to post the necessary security when filing her appeal of the Pennsylvania judgment as required by 42 Pa. S.C.A. 1731(a).
V. CONCLUSION
For the preceding reasons, Defendant’s motion to stay enforcement of judgment is DENIED.
Courtesy of: MasonCountyWebTV.com
Shelton, WA (12-18-18) — Many local residents have had to contend with fraudulent charges to their credit cards over the holidays. Police suspect the Grinch resembles the pictures below:
Know this guy? Call 360-426-4441Know this guy? Call 360-426-4441Know this guy? Call 360-426-4441
Law enforcement officials received several reports throughout Mason County regarding credit card and ATM fraud. These reports were likely the result of credit card skimmers.
Skimming is a process in which criminals will use a scanning device to steal ATM and credit card information, including PIN numbers. The thief can then make a fraudulent ATM or credit card using the account holder’s information. Credit card skimming devices have become wide spread as a means of stealing money from account holders and financial institutions. Losses in the Shelton area alone have been staggering.
The skimming devices are often hard to detect as they fit on or around the ATM or credit machine. ATM machines with exposed keypads are particularly susceptible to skimmers. Covering the keypad as you enter your PIN number can often help to protect your information.
Thanks to the proactive efforts of our local credit unions, Shelton Police has obtained video from Sunday, December 16, 2018 of a thief using fraudulent credit cards in an ATM to steal money from several accounts.
12-7-18 — The following is an excerpt from Dana Walker’s excellent FB page discussing Olympia’s Media Island meltdown:
Andras Jones:Thanks for asking Ken [Burch]. We’ll start with KAOS. I hosted Radio8Ball there for 10 years. During that time my co-host Tammy T regularly engaged in behavior that made me uncomfortable including lots of dramatic late night e-mails from her and very public attacks from her partner Merwyn Haskett.
Merwyn Haskett
I spoke with program director Donna Crg DiBianco about my uncomfortable feelings with Tammy and she encouraged me to give her another chance. After several more chances I finally made the decision to do the show without her. She had her own show on KAOS so she did not lose access to the station but her response was to target me for harassment that included tearing down my flyers, sending (and getting other people to send) threatening e-mails to me, calls to my other places of business encouraging them not to work with me, slanderous graffiti using my name at public places like The Brotherhood Lounge
She also composed a very public blog that KAOS knew about in which she made many claims about me that were untrue and painted her as the innocent victim of an evil man who took away her show.
When I complained to the new station manager Ruth Brownstein about this she said we needed to work it out and that it wasn’t a KAOS issue. Ruth then started to file negative reports about me. One night not long after reporting the harassment program director Jerry Drummond accosted me before I went on air in front of a witness. He shouted obscenities at me and repeated claims that Tammy had been posting on her blog about the show going down the tubes since she left.
John Ford
I filed a report about this and two weeks later my show was canceled and the next day Jerry Drummond filed an untrue report with campus police that I had assaulted him.
Brett Clubbe, Kaos Radio host
Since then Ruth Brownstein, John Ford and others on the KAOS staff have spread rumors and lies about me. Ask Brett Clubbe if you want to know how they work. I should say one more thing. Tammy T admitted to her harassment of me in a letter which I re-printed in my book “Accidental Initiations” but no one at KAOS or Evergreen has been willing to demand that I receive some kind of hearing about being harassed, reporting it, and then being punished for doing so. Meanwhile, Radio8Ball has gone onto great success and KAOS gets to take no part in it, which is very sad for the community of people who loved the show and have no idea what KAOS did to get rid of it.
As for the co-op, there’s nothing wrong with passing a boycott of Israeli goods if you do so in a way that invites and includes community discussion, but when you abuse the process to ram it through in one night without inviting the community or the staff to have a say then you’re playing dirty. And when you play dirty in a way that excludes Jews from a conversation about Israel it is as anti-semitic as it would be to exclude women from a discussion about reproductive rights, or people of color from a conversation about police brutality, or to exclude Muslim people from a conversation about Israel.
If you have to cheat to win then you are not in the right and you make that space unsafe for everyone. I should also point out that the boycott led to removing one item from the shelves so it had zero impact in Israel but a huge impact in Olympia. The Olympia Food Co–op that began in my uncle’s garage in the 70’s is someplace I do not feel safe or welcome and I actually oppose Israel’s military policies, but I also oppose anti-semitic bullies in Olympia and anyone who justifies the Co-op’s actions to exclude community involvement, especially the Jewish community, in that decision is a supporter of anti-semitism no matter how they may try dress it up.
As for what went on at MII, I have no clue and I do not take anyone’s side. I am speaking generally about intersectionality and inclusivity and using my own experience of being targeted by reactionary bullies as an example.
I don’t know who the reactionary bullies are in this situation. It sounds to me like everyone is really triggered and I don’t think triggered people generally make the best decisions, which is why processes that allow people to be heard and to listen are what I think we need, not just at MII.
And finally, just so we’re clear, when you gather a gang of people together to harass a Jewish person it’s going to be terrifying to them in a specific way which is unique to the Jewish experience. If you then punish the terrified Jewish person for reporting the harassment this too is going to have a unique effect on a person who comes from a culture that has experienced anti-semitism and unfair treatment at the hands of authorities who are supposed to protect them.
And if you then manipulate processes designed to protect people to further target, isolate and slander that Jew then you are fully engaging the anti-semitic playbook.
And finally, if the largest community organization in town uses the same dirty tactics to manipulate their own processes to exclude Jews from a conversation about Israel, well, then one might rightly say, as i do, that Olympia is an anti-semitic little town and the only way to prove me wrong is to be willing to have the anti-semitism conversation, which would include addressing the cases I related above with an awareness that anti-semitism is real and the people who want to talk about it aren’t just being dramatic, paranoid, or trying to play a card. We are people with a specific history that includes being murdered while our “allies” on the left watched and did nothing.
As you can see I have a lot of energy for this conversation and despite those who suggest, as many have, that I just walk away, that is something I will never do. You’re welcome.
Death blew east on a savage wind, driving flames over foothills and across a river, spitting glowing embers and scrubbing the earth bare.
It was coming for Don Andrews.
His bulldozer’s windows shattered, flinging glass into his face. The blue-green shards were everywhere: on the floor, inside his helmet, in his skin and eyes. He was alone and blinded. The firestorm shook the ground and roared as loud as a passing train.
I’m not going to survive this, he thought.
In three decades of firefighting, Andrews, 60, had witnessed plenty of close calls. He’d seen blistering heat melt the stickers on his dozer in Mariposa County. More than once, when flames burned over his rig, he’d summoned helicopters or planes to cover him with water or pink retardant.
About this project
After reporting on the Carr Fire in July, reporter Lizzie Johnson, working with Chronicle photographers, graphic artists and digital producers, sought to reconstruct in detail the deadly fire tornado that swept into Redding three days after the blaze ignited. The account in this story is based on exclusive interviews with survivors and family members of those killed, as well as more than a dozen other interviews with witnesses and officials, Cal Fire investigative reports, audio of 911 calls and video footage provided to The Chronicle.
But on this day, July 26, he wasn’t supposed to be this close to the edge. He’d come from his home in Orland in Glenn County for a fairly routine contract assignment at the Carr Fire in Shasta County, hired by the state’s Cal Fire agency to carve a thick ring of dirt around a subdivision of homes. The containment lines were three dozer blades wide and designed to halt the advance of the wildfire, which was still miles away.
What Andrews didn’t know was that the Carr Fire — to that point a dangerous but rather ordinary California inferno — was about to spawn something monstrous: a fire tornado the likes of which the state had never seen.
The vortex of air ripped around a column of rising heat, flames licking its walls. A freak of meteorology, it would annihilate everything in its path, uprooting trees and crumpling electrical towers. For the men and women who spend their summers on the fire lines, the tornado was an ominous glimpse of the extremes our warming climate will bring.
As Andrews’ focus turned from plowing defensible space to warding off potentially fatal burns, several others in the twister’s path — firefighters, bulldozer drivers and residents not yet evacuated from their homes — faced similar peril.
Death was stalking each of them. Over 150 hellish minutes, they would claw for survival. Some would forge narrow escapes. Some would become heroes. Several wouldn’t live through the night.
Andrews had little choice but to hunker down. He gripped the dozer’s protective foil curtains closed with his left hand to keep the wind from batting them open. With his right hand, he pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth. The heat seared his throat.
This was how most firefighters died, he knew. Not from flames, but their own bodies roasting. Temperatures within the tornado soared to 2,700 degrees, flames blasting into the sky. A nearby Cal Fire truck exploded.
Andrews dialed 911. His singed hands trembled.
A dispatcher answered, on the verge of tears. Dozens of others had phoned in already describing the unfolding hell. Now, here was a call from ground zero.
I don’t know how long I can last,” Andrews told her. “I need to get out of here.”
“If you can, get out safely, OK?”
“I can’t. It’s all on fire around me. Don’t risk anybody’s life for mine.”
SEEING THE MONSTER
Even before the tornado formed, California’s fire season had been unrelenting. The ruinous Wine Country wildfires the previous year began to seem less a singular catastrophe than a foreshadowing.
In 2017, fires had set new state records for size and destruction. Those records would fall again this year as flames threatened Yosemite National Park, torched mansions in Malibu and, in the worst fire in California history, wiped out the Sierra foothills town of Paradise. Ninety-three civilians and six firefighters would die.
The tornado signified with horrifying clarity the reality California faces. As wildfire season intensifies, conflagrations will increasingly defy efforts to control them, becoming more powerful and erratic as they race into communities, striking in ways that once seemed unfathomable.
“As much as I hate to say it, this is what the future of wildfires looks like,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “Except the acceleration hasn’t ended yet.”
But for three days in July, it was the job of Incident Cmdr. Tom Lubas, 48, to try to outmaneuver the Carr Fire as it inched closer to his hometown of Redding, defying the multiagency effort to contain it.
Cal Fire Incident Cmdr. Tom Lubas watched with disbelief as the fire tornado, fed by cool coastal air, grew to massive size July 26, a phenomenon he’d never encountered before.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
The wildfire had begun in typical fashion — human error colliding with a dry landscape primed to burn. It hadn’t rained in the area since May and winter precipitation had been 50 percent below normal. More than 17 other wildfires were already burning across the state, so resources to fight it were stretched.
On July 23, an older couple, driving home from vacation to tend to a family emergency, cut through Redding. A tire on their trailer went flat, leaving the wheel to drag on pavement near Whiskeytown Lake. Sparks flew into parched grass.
Lubas, a 23-year veteran of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, knew most wildfires did their worst damage in the first hours after ignition, before firefighters dug in. Now, days later, the crews in Shasta County were well past that threshold. Lubas and his colleagues had set up a command center. Called in firefighters from all over. Carved containment lines.
But on Thursday, July 26, the fire exploded from 4,500 acres to more than 30,000, its footprint rippling outward in a rainbow of colors on Lubas’ maps. Just after noon, he had handed off his incident commander role, becoming an operations section chief, and left base camp at the Shasta County fairgrounds in Redding.
It was supposed to be his day off, and he planned to shower and rest. From his truck window, though, he could see coastal winds stoking the blaze and smoke thickening.
He watched as a 30,000-foot-tall convection column — a plume filled with ash, debris and hydrocarbons — ballooned in the sky, condensing into fluffy pyrocumulus clouds. The column acted like the lid on a pot of boiling water. When you took it off, oxygen fed the fire, sucking up the hot air. That’s what the column had done overnight: collapse, then blow flames in every direction, ripping through the county’s rural oak woodland and knotted manzanita.
As Lubas drove, his truck registered the temperature outside: 113 degrees. On the coast, 150 miles west near Eureka, it was 59 degrees. Lubas was worried — and right to be. As the cool coastal air blew over Bully Choop Mountain and into the Sacramento Valley, the 54-degree difference caused warm air to shoot up in a vortex. The convection column would rotate faster and faster, contorting into a cyclone.
Sometime after 5:30 p.m., as Lubas finished grocery shopping, the sky grew dark. The fire’s behavior alarmed him, so he went back to work, driving to the hills northwest of Redding to assist evacuating residents. But more than an hour later, at the intersection of Keswick Dam and Quartz Hill roads near the Lake Keswick Estates neighborhood, he stopped. He was blocked.
Ahead of him, the tornado twisted. It was sinister and snake-like, a swirl of orange that seemed to fill the entire sky. Flames soared 400 feet in the air. It would grow to 1,000 feet wide, the length of three football fields, and produce temperatures double those of a typical wildfire. Its howling obliterated every other sound.
Lubas jumped out of his truck to record a video on his cell phone and was immediately blown onto his back. Goosebumps prickled his arms.
Holy shit, he thought, scrambling back into his truck. Nobody is going to believe this.
‘Get out of there!’
Across the Sacramento River, 5 miles west of Lubas, Don Ray Smith’s radio crackled with the voice of his crew leader.
“Get out of there!”
Smith, 81, had been bulldozing contingency lines into the razorback ridges near the Buckeye Water Treatment Plant. It was treacherous work; dozers can tip and roll on such steep ground. The lines had been abandoned earlier in the day for this reason, but no one had told Smith.
He’d driven nearly four hours from his home in Pollock Pines in El Dorado County to help battle the blaze. Some thought he was too old for the work, but he wasn’t the kind who took to retirement. As a private contractor, he’d operated heavy machinery for Cal Fire for more than a decade and had no plans of stopping.
As day turned to dusk, the tornado began to form. It wouldn’t touch down for another hour, but it was rapidly gaining strength. Its black winds whipped faster, shaking Smith’s bulldozer. It looked like a dust storm, but instead of soil and sand, smoke and embers raced through the air, pelting Smith.
Flames cut off the access road to the treatment plant, trapping him. Two firefighters chased him down the line, trying to reach him from behind, but it was too late. The blaze threatened to burn over him.
There was little else to do but try to create a small safety zone, a ring of bare dirt around his vehicle that he hoped would protect him. Through the smoke, four helicopters dropped water near his last known location. The pilots had to guess — they couldn’t see the ground. It was so hot that one helicopter’s temperature warning light flicked on, and, at 6:08 p.m., it was forced to land.
“I’m cut off by the fire,” Smith said over the radio, in his final dispatch. “I’m pushing down.”
7 p.m.
Escape to Keswick Dam
About 5 miles to the southwest, Patrick Hoffman, 29, steered a fire engine along rural roads to reunite with the rest of the strike team deployed to Redding by the Marin County Fire Department. It was his ninth fire season with the agency, and he was finally learning to supervise an engine.
Capt. Mark Burbank, 43, and two new seasonal firefighters were in the back as Hoffman drove south through the tiny community of Keswick. By then, flames shot across Iron Mountain Road, one of the two main routes through the Gold Rush town.
Marin County Fire Department firefighter Patrick Hoffman (left) and Mark Burbank, a fire captain, took refuge with their team at Keswick Dam and watched as the Carr Fire jumped the Sacramento River. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
Hoffman had turned left on Keswick Dam Road, toward the Sacramento River, when everything went dark. The crew plunged into a void of black smoke. They were in the belly of what would become the tornado — but it hadn’t started swirling yet. Embers glowed like stars. The lines on the road below disappeared. Then the gas pedal slackened, the engine robbed of the oxygen that fed the fire’s combustion.
Flames flared ahead, and Hoffman reversed. Flames flared behind, and he accelerated. Back and forth he went, like a player in a high-stakes game of “Frogger.” It was more than 200 degrees inside the engine’s cab, so hot that the mapping system powered down. Painted letters, reading “Point Reyes,” melted off the engine’s side. So did their taillights. If the rig stalled … Hoffman didn’t want to think about it.
In the back seat, Burbank worked the radios. “We are in a bad spot,” he messaged his battalion chief. “We are in a really bad spot.”
.
Firefighters carry personal shelters as a tool of last resort. The Marin crew members knew they needed to deploy theirs now. Ahead, Burbank spotted a gate leading to a small field. He figured they could break out the thin foil blankets — which reflect heat while preserving a pocket of breathable air — and crawl under them, waiting out the storm.
“I’m going to check the gate,” he said, opening the engine door.
Burbank walked 10 feet, maybe less. Radiant heat blasted his face. His protective yellow suit started smoking. His eyes watered.
Even if I make it to this gate, he thought, I won’t make it back alive.
So he retreated to the engine. Hoffman then nosed the vehicle flush against a steep bank, a buffer from wind, flames and flying debris that threatened to shatter the windshield.
“Everyone grab your fire shelters and get ready to hold them against the windows!” Burbank shouted.
He thought of his wife, Yvonne, and their three young children. Firefighters had been dying over the summer; now he was going to be the next. But in that moment, the smoke shifted. Black faded to a caramel brown. A mirage? No, a break.
Hoffman gunned the vehicle down Keswick Dam Road, pausing for two of the men to snap a bolt on a gate, before parking in a gravel lot near the dam’s power plant. The crew of four abandoned the engine and hiked to the edge of the river. It was 113 degrees, but the air outside the suffocating engine felt as crisp as a winter breeze. Burbank re-established radio contact, trying to hide his shaking hands.
“Head’s up, Engine 1564 is taking refuge at Keswick Dam.”
As the Marin firefighters looked north, the flames swirled and converged as the blaze hopped the river. Ahead was Redding, population 90,000. The fire tornado was touching down.
7:15 p.m.
‘I’ll lead you out’
“Issue evacuation orders for the neighborhood of Sunset Terrace,” Shawn Raley barked over the radio to his branch commander, “all the way down to Eureka Way to Shasta High School.”
The sky was red and the wind screamed, shaking the leaves off trees. New fires lit in shrubs and on roofs.
People are going to get trapped, thought the Cal Fire captain, a 24-year veteran of wild-land blazes. They are going to die.
Shawn Raley, a Cal Fire captain, drove his truck into the hills east of Redding and into the path of the fire tornado to help evacuate residents trying to flee. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
He drove to the Land Park and Stanford Hills subdivisions tucked into the wooded hills east of Redding, figuring residents would need help escaping. His headlights barely pierced the smoke, but he could see black clouds whipping across the road. Three bulldozers inched past him on two-lane Buenaventura Boulevard — one driven by Don Andrews, the others by contractors Terry Cummings and Jimmie Jones. They were under some electrical lines, which were swaying in the wind, and he shouted at them to move north, farther away.
Raley’s childhood was forged in fire. His parents worked as U.S. Forest Service firefighters and raised him in Mount Shasta in Siskiyou County. It seemed they were always rushing off in the middle of the night to battle a conflagration. Raley had worked on elite hotshot crews into the worst parts of blazes with little support, and he’d leaped from airplanes and rappelled from helicopters as a Forest Service smokejumper.
Stuff that scared everyone else gave Raley an adrenaline rush. Except snakes. They terrified him. He had seen nearly everything, including swirling eddies of air called fire whirls. But this — he hadn’t seen anything like this.
In the driveway of a sprawling house, Raley spotted an idling Tesla. Dr. Nanda Kumar, 62, had raced 5 miles home from Vibra Hospital of Northern California. His wife Yasoda, 58, and daughter Sushma, 29, were alone. They hadn’t received an evacuation alert, and when the power cut, their garage door wouldn’t open.
Video: As Shawn Raley helped evacuate residents from nearby subdivisions, footage from a camera on his dashboard captured his encounter with the Kumar family.
“Go back!” Raley shouted at Kumar, sounding his siren. “You’re not —”
“My wife and daughter are there, can they come in?” Kumar said, pointing to his vehicle.
“Come in my truck?” Raley asked. “Yes.”
The women, still in their pajamas, climbed into the back seat, coughing. Nearby, flames that climbed 100 feet devoured their neighbors’ homes. Soon, their home would fall as well. Trees bent nearly in half.
“I’ll lead you out,” Raley yelled to Kumar. “Take your car.”
Debris pelted the truck, cracking Raley’s windshield and shattering the others, as the wind blew the vehicle off the road. The captain threw himself across the passenger seat, shielding his face, as the fire passed over them. Yasoda and Sushma screamed.
“Are you OK?” Raley shouted, though he knew the answer.
He couldn’t hear his own voice over the tornado. He was embarrassed. What a weird emotion to feel at this moment, he thought. He’d told this trapped family he would get them out safely. Now they were covered in glass and bleeding. Behind them, the trunk of Kumar’s Tesla was aflame.
Raley never thought he would die on a fire line. But maybe this was it.
Sushma Thiruvoipati (left), her mother, Yasoda Thiruvoipati, and father, Nanda Kumar, were forced to try to outrace the fire tornado after their home lost power and the garage door would not open. The whirling flames passed over them as they fled. Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
7:30 p.m.
The black rectangle
The radio call from Redding fire Inspector Jeremy “J.J.” Stoke couldn’t have been more urgent:
“Mayday!” he said.
Redding fire Inspector Jeremy “J.J.” Stoke, who had left a vacation early to help fight the Carr Fire, was caught in the path of the fire tornado. Photo: Casey Lansdon / Associated Press
The 37-year-old had cut short a family vacation in Oregon and Idaho with his wife and two children to come home and battle the Carr Fire. That night, he’d joined others in evacuating residents from the Land Park neighborhood. As the tornado descended, he was about 250 feet northwest of Raley, driving his truck south on Buenaventura Boulevard. The ferocity of the thing defied his long experience.
“I need a water drop,” Stoke called out at 7:39 p.m. “I’m getting burned over.”
An engine captain responded immediately, asking for his location. There was no response.
The tornado picked up Stoke’s 5,000-pound Ford F-150 truck as if it was a toy car, flipping it repeatedly and dragging it down Buenaventura Boulevard. The truck scraped the pavement, leaving a trail of red paint, before coming to rest in the woods.
The twister destroyed everything around him, buckling an electrical tower into a jumble of steel, lofting a shipping container and blasting the bark off oak trees. Even after Stoke’s truck was towed, a black rectangle remained scorched on the ground. There, his friends and family would build a memorial covered in firefighting badges and Giants baseball caps.
For months, Stoke’s colleagues would search the area for his lost helmet. They never found it.
Scorched earth and melted metal mark the spot where Jeremy Stoke’s truck, tossed by the fire tornado, came to rest near Buenaventura Boulevard in Redding. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
7:30 p.m.
Melody and the kids
Just south, on Quartz Hill Road, 70-year-old Melody Bledsoe soaked blankets in her kitchen sink and draped them over her great-grandchildren, Emily and James “Junior” Roberts, who were 4 and 5 years old.
Melody’s husband, Ed, was a handyman who’d gone just down the road to pick up a paycheck. The family hadn’t been ordered to evacuate, and Ed didn’t know the tornado was headed their way — until he got a desperate, frightened call from Junior while he was stuck in gridlocked traffic.
“Are you coming?” the boy asked, his small voice frantic. The storm was sucking air through the house, rattling the windows, and ripping through the trees outside.
Ed Bledsoe was on the phone to his family on Quartz Hill Road in northwest Redding when he lost contact with his wife, Melody, and great-grandchildren, James Roberts Jr., 5, and Emily Roberts, 4. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
“Don’t worry, Grandpa is coming.”
“You gotta come in the front door, the back door is on fire,” Junior said. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“That’s where I’m coming. Be ready. You guys be ready. I’ll be there just as quick as I can. I’m waiting for the fire to pass.”
“Tell Grandpa I love him,” Melody Bledsoe said in the background, her voice barely audible.
“Everybody says they love you,” Junior said. “Come get us, Grandpa. There’s starting to be a lot of fire here.”
Then the call went silent.
7:45 p.m.
A text and a prayer
Three elements make fire: heat, oxygen and fuel.
So as the blaze spotted around bulldozer driver Terry Cummings in an open field near Buenaventura Boulevard, the 44-year-old attacked the wildfire’s base. He would choke off its fuel. Stop the flames from spreading. Two other dozer operators on contract with Cal Fire — Don Andrews and Jimmie Jones — worked alongside him. Raley was their boss.
Terry Cummings was fighting the Carr Fire in Redding when he became trapped in his bulldozer by the tornado. He suffered burns all over his body, including his back, face, right leg and hands. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
Fire should have scared Cummings. The contractor grew up in the mountains in a logging and milling family. As a child, he would sit on his father’s lap as he drove their bulldozer through the woods. But in 2005, his mother, sister and brother died in a house fire ignited by a candle, and soon after, he shut down the family business. He’d chased wildfires ever since.
Cummings had the rough look of a firefighter, but his hair was shiny and fell to his mid-back — his one vanity.
Video: From his bulldozer, Terry Cummings recorded a video on his cell phone of the oncoming flames.
“I was in some bad firestorms,” he texted his girlfriend, Shalli, at 8:04 p.m. “I love you.”
The field around him was a sea of rippling orange, the embers and flames seemingly alive. He couldn’t breathe from the smoke. He flagged down Andrews and Jones and led them back to Buenaventura Boulevard. He figured they could wait between the steep banks on either side of the road. The air would be clear, and the dozer engines could cool down.
But as they drove north, the tornado descended again, its edges glowing red. It whipped rocks into Cummings’ windshield like bullets, shattering the glass. It was as dark as midnight. Then it picked up the front of his 25-ton bulldozer, pivoting it clockwise and dropping it on the hood of a nearby truck, which was crushed and aflame.
The driver must be dead, Cummings thought.
He reached for the fire shelter tucked behind his seat, but nabbed his gear bag by accident. He held it in front of his face to protect his airways. White blisters bubbled on his fingertips. His skin felt like it was melting. He screamed in pain.
“No Lord,” he screamed. “Not like this!”
Now, it seemed, he was going to die the way his family had. The tornado sucked Cummings halfway out the shattered window, his body drawn by a gravity he didn’t understand. He gripped the window frame. Jagged glass pierced his left leg as he pulled himself back inside.
Reaching up, he tried to unfold the fire curtains over his dozer’s open windows. But the third-degree burns on his fingers prevented him from undoing the clasps. He grabbed a knife and cut them. Finally reaching his fire shelter, he pulled its cord as best he could.
“Be calm. Don’t make mistakes,” he repeated to himself. “Be calm. Don’t make mistakes.”
For a moment, the wind stopped.
8 p.m.
Into the blade
Minutes later, the tornado raced down Buenaventura Boulevard again.
Even now, much about the storm remains unknown. Several fire tornadoes could have occurred. Or maybe it was one, weakening and then again gathering strength. Those who witnessed it say it appeared to wane several times, only to be recharged.
In a final Cal Fire report, there is no consensus. What scientists know is this: Wind follows the terrain, and, as the twister headed uphill, it slowed. Then it probably fell backward, attacking the same area again.
At that moment, the particulars didn’t matter much to Steve Bustillos, 55, as he cringed in the driver’s seat of his truck — the one that sat mangled and flaming under Terry Cummings’ dozer. The air quivered and warped from the heat, like the horizon of an asphalt highway on a hot day.
Former San Jose police Officer Steve Bustillos, of Redding, saw his truck crushed by a tornado-tossed bulldozer as he attempted to evacuate the Stanford Hills subdivision during the Carr Fire. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
A retired San Jose police officer, Bustillos lived in the Stanford Hills subdivision. He hadn’t evacuated in time because he didn’t know he needed to. The fire had moved that quickly. As he drove out of the gated neighborhood just after 8 p.m., he called his wife, who was receiving treatment in the Bay Area for endometrial and lung cancer, both stage 4.
“It might be over,” he told her. “The fire is here.”
Now he was in grave trouble. The fire spreading in his pickup fed off spilled diesel, torching paperwork, jewelry and guns in the back seat. Bustillos’ hair looked like someone had taken a blowtorch to it. He knew he couldn’t stay put.
So he climbed outside, grabbing a suitcase filled with clothing, and made a desperate move, crouching in the blade of Cummings’ bulldozer, which provided some protection from the wind. He held the luggage in front of him. Fifteen seconds passed, or possibly 15 minutes. He wasn’t sure.
Embers floated through the air as the wind shifted. Fire danced through the grass and in the trees. Then the temperature dropped, perhaps by as much as 50 degrees. Bustillos saw Cummings sprinting down the street under his semi-deployed fire shelter.
“Get me out of here!” Cummings yelled at a man driving a Cal Fire truck, his voice cracking. “I am burned really bad.”
Bustillos hopped into a second truck. Then he saw the driver’s face. He knew that expression from decades in law enforcement — the look when someone wearing a uniform, which meant they were supposed to keep people safe, knew that might not be possible.
“I saw it in them,” he said. “These guys were scared.”
8:15 p.m.
‘Where is Don?’
The tornado had jumped a river, blasted across fields, leveled neighborhoods and rendered the landscape smooth and alien. Now it was dissipating, finally. But as it withdrew back into the sky, few knew that.
Firefighters and police officers and residents, gripped by fear, were rushing to escape what they supposed was an inevitable death. In the chaos, Don Andrews was left behind. Alive — at least for now, he thought.
Again, the dozer operator reached for his cell phone. He called his son.
“Tell my wife I love her,” he said. “Please. Take care of her.”
Down the hill, now near the intersection of Nash and Keswick Dam roads, Cmdr. Lubas watched people stream out of hillside neighborhoods. Their stares were vacant, like those of soldiers returning from battle. They’d survived the worst of a fire that killed eight people — including Don Ray Smith, Jeremy Stoke, Melody Bledsoe and her great-grandchildren — and ruined more than 1,000 homes over 38 days.
“They couldn’t comprehend what was going on,” Lubas said later. “I have been doing this for 23 fire seasons, and I have never seen anything remotely close to that tornado.”
Lubas helped spray down the back of Dr. Kumar’s Tesla, which was still flaming. He directed their savior, Capt. Raley, to set up a triage area for burn victims, and ordered five ambulances. Then he left to continue evacuating more residents along Lake Boulevard. More people flooded the intersection.
Andrews still wasn’t among them.
“Where is Don?” his colleague, Mike Merdock, kept asking. “Why did no one get Don?”
Eventually, Merdock was able to drive up Buenaventura Boulevard, past California Highway Patrol officers who had blocked off the street, and find the bulldozer. He figured Andrews was dead, that he couldn’t possibly have survived. But as he grabbed the back of the contractor’s shirt to haul him out of his vehicle, Andrews twitched.
Don Andrews, a contract bulldozer operator with Cal Fire, hugs his wife Debra at the spot near Buenaventura Boulevard where his bulldozer was overwhelmed by a fire tornado as he fought the Carr Fire in Redding. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
Together, they drove out of the decimated neighborhood, Andrews thinking one thought: How did anyone live through this?
All that was left, for as far as he could see, was ash.
Don Andrews, Terry Cummings; Shawn Raley (Cal Fire);
Craig Martin, John Richey, Chris Varnum (Redding Fire Dept.)
A landscape left barren in the aftermath of the Carr Fire tornado serves as a backdrop as survivors share their stories. Media: Guy Wathen, Santiago Mejia
Tom Nogler, long time prior MI board member, Affidavit of support Tom’s Statement
Opium’s (online abattoir) demonizing all white men as ‘white supremacists’ and ‘over privileged white patriarchs’ in support of the manipulative sexist racist drama queen, Shawna Hawk: OPIUM Posts
14 year old Olivia Fellows Challenges Drama Queen’s condescending tone
Hysterical Drama Queen Guts Rick Fellows & Tom & Media Island Using Dana Walker (pic below) as her personal white bogeyman
Jimmy ADMITS he’s a privileged white male patriarch in the above MI audio. The truth be told, he has all the characteristics of a dog except loyalty. White male patriarchs are personas non-grata now at Media Island—UNLESS they’re SOOoo privileged and rich Shawna & disciples refuse to notice. It would appear Jimmy is the exception to anti-white male discrimination at MI. Hey, Big Spender!–you’re too cool.
Dana Walker ( Shawna’s bete noire), homeless independent community journalist & publisher of THE THUNDERBOLT weekly online magazine, previously unpaid caretaker of Media Island & programmer of its KOWA radio station
Shawna managed to be elected to Media Island’s Board of Directors by way of a vote of approval by the very (feckless) board members she removed from that same board soon thereafter, i.e. Rick Fellows and Tom, who had invested 32 years of their life into the community based non-profit, w/no pension/retirement, no gold watch, no health care, no nothing!
Shawna removed other progressives as well, among them: Food Not Bombs, an organization dedicated to feeding the poor; Works In Progress, a progressive newspaper; Bruce Wilkerson, a community activist; Dana Walker, an unpaid caretaker, independent homeless community journalist, publisher & KOWA radio programmer; Abby, a black woman and unpaid caretaker prior to Shawna’s arrival, and others whose names escape this journalist for the moment due to sheer numbers.
Shawna Hawk’s ALMA MATER (TESC, College of Indoctrination):
Shawna replaced these activist organizations with her personally selected coterie of TESC indoctrinated sexist racists and bigots who vehemently argue all white men are persona non-grata (except Jimmy, the President of the board who is so wealthy they appear not to notice how white and male HE is!), white supremacists, and privileged patriarchs. i.e. They hate white men, insult and constantly disparage them while routinely discriminating against them. And, frankly, a number of those men that have previously been in the Media Island mix DESERVE it–stupidity has consequences.
Shawna Hawk’s favored neo-male type: James A. Bolling of TESC:
Even the gods cannot protect fools from their folly goes a Greek aphorism. You boneheads KNEW (or should have with even a modicum of due diligence and a background check) SHE WAS A SNAKE WHEN YOU PICKED HER UP! Even Evergreen’s KAOS radio station showed her the way out the door. Her ex-husband’s sworn declarations in their divorce (Pierce County) make life living with her sound like a tale from the crypt. “Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.” -Hosea-
THE current FALSE NARRATIVE (sweeping the dirt under the rug):
From Media Island’s home page:
We live in critical times. No longer can we avoid our responsibilities to each other and to the planet. The opportunity for the evolution of a more inclusive, ecological, and international civil society lies before us. At Media Island International we believe individuals will take these steps when given access to the whole story. Understanding that people’s access to information is limited by corporate ownership and control of most communication outlets, MII is dedicated to provide access to alternative media and first-hand sources of information regionally, nationally, and internationally. MII is committed to collecting, processing, and distributing crucial information addressing the social justice, economic democracy, ecological sustainability and peace issues that we all collectively face. At Media Island’s resource and networking center we provide tools to make individuals voice heard and resources to strengthen that voice. Media Island’s center is host to a variety of meetings, workshops and speakers to help educate and network our communities. People are welcome to stop in browse, socialize, plan, compute, watch a video or just sit down and enjoy a hot beverage. In addition to the books, CDs and videos that are available at the library, we also have zines, magazines, newspapers, a wide variety of information from many campaigns and struggles locally, regionally continentally and worldwide. Many of these materials are available at the Info-shop on the front porch, and are available in our library. Our Issue based research archive is held in numerous filing cabinets and holds materials dredged up over decades of Social Justice, Economic Democracy, Ecological Sustainability, and Peace campaigning. To broaden the distribution of important information, volunteers strive to publish information packets at critical times to provide a more complete picture of current events. Anyone interested in making information accessible should plug in. The library and Infoshop are maintained through the hard work and dedication of members of the Media Island Collective and the community. None of the volunteers are paid and all donations to the library go towards maintaining the space and expanding the collection. Without the support of the community the library would not be possible. If you find this space valuable in any way please help support us. We are working to reestablish public open house hours but currently are available via request and reservation, and very much depends on volunteer energy. Access phone numbers are posted on the front door. Visit the info-porch during open house hours. The Back Story of Media Island Media Island International (MII) was started in 1984 by a group of dedicated activists with a desire to spread under-published information on critical issues ignored by the mainstream media. For many years, MII accomplished this goal by reprinting and distributing articles from alternative publications as well as information and news gained from direct contact with those working on the issues. Understanding that access to information is limited by corporate ownership and control of most communication outlets, MII dedicated itself to distributing alternative media and developing relations with first-hand sources of information locally, nationally and internationally. This deepened our involvement with people working on under-reported and critical environmental, indigenous, peace, and social justice issues such as:
Black Mesa/ Big Mountain: Native Americans challenging forced relocation.
Leonard Peltier: Internationally recognized as U.S. political prisoner.
Lyle Point: native fishing and burial site on Columbia River threatened by development.
Chiapas, Mexico: Mayans suffering militarization and violence call for help from international civil society to achieve autonomy, justice and peace with dignity.
Grass Lake, Allison and McAllister Springs, Rolling Fields, and Long Lake campaigns: Citizen activists working on local pressing environmental, public health and growth management issues. Our volunteer staff aided in developing lawsuits against developers, networking individuals and groups of interest to specific issues, and doing educational campaigns. Our work directly aided drinking water source protection and pesticide education, the preserving of wetlands, and curbing urban sprawl through the creation of public parks. And many others.
Media Island is no longer meaningfully accessible to the vast majority of Olympia’s residents–As a reading of the above linked article and details makes painfully clear.
Please help in circulating the above article I spent days researching and investigating in order to expose the machinations behind the hostile takeover of Media Island. Those responsible, and their acolytes, are engaged in a campaign of censorship to hide the facts of the hostile takeover of Media Island…including the deliberate triggering of FB’s algorithm suppressing the above post-link from being relayed–a link to an article on the Mason County Blog covering the story. Please copy and paste it liberally. This NEEDS to get out there. Dana’s trial/hearing is today in the Thurston County District Court. Rm #3, 2000 Lakeridge Drive, Olympia, WA @ 9:00 PM . (11-30-18) The case is all about trying to shut Dana up (or any other journalist so disposed) from reporting on the intrigue at Media Island along with the blatant racism and sexism currently underway. Those in favor of 1st Amendment principle’s can’t all be shut down, even with the likes of Zuckerberg blocking the way, if we collective take direct action to preserve the 1st Amendment and right to public participation. The above article contains an audio recording the principals tried to keep a secret with a confidentiality ‘agreement’ that was overcome with a subpoena. It reveals the virulent machinations behind closed doors along with other shocking court documents–not the least being the effort to use Washington’s anti-harassment statute (RCW 10.40) as a SLAPP suit (against public participation)–an egregious abuse of process.
Be part of the solution. If we fail to exercise our rights, we WILL lose them, and the leftwing neo-Nazi sexist racist anti-white new order will become the new normal, the new accepted bigotry with the politicization and misappropriation of the commons on their menu.
‘Lisa’ Ganser in Hawk v. Walker courtroom, pal EV Webb in background
_________________________________________________________________ Courtroom Audio files/links at last of 11-30-18 Hawk v. Walker
1st Portion of Thurston District Courtroom Audio Rejecting Hawk’s Claims1st Portion of Thurston District Courtroom Audio Rejecting Hawk’s Claims2nd Portion of Thurston District Courtroom Audio Further Rejecting Hawk2nd Portion of Thurston District Courtroom Audio Further Rejecting HawkListeners should note the judge lecturing Shawna & her acolytes TWICE in the 1st courtroom audio clip. and yet again toward the end of the 2nd beginning with the right to photograph in public spaces/venues, the right to participate in public affairs, the right to report and to publish, the prohibition against prior restraint, Shawna’s failure to state a (lawful) claim, and her abuse of process, i.e. attempting to use an improper forum to shit Dana up and have an injunction issued against him publishing about a hot topic of public interest–the misappropriation of Media Island’s house (donated for PUBLIC use!) by Shawna Hawk, her Greek Chorus, and Jimmy Mateson, the Big Spender.In fact, the judge suspended the normal rules of the court and evidence to allow Shawna as much rope to hang herself (which she did) as she liked. It was her tour de force of incompetence, intersectionality, racism, sexism, bigotry, melodrama, violations of Dana’s civil rights, abuse of process, and a failed attempt to manipulate the court with her standard MO. Even so, Olympia’s Food Co-0p continues to trail in Shawna’s footsteps through this swamp.The entire audio is almost 2 hours long, but well worth listening to if the politicization and misappropriation of the community commons are concerns, or the targeting and victimization of a homeless journalist for having the courage to do his job: To alert the public.
‘Lisa’ Ganser’s Take:
From POOR Magazine, Olympia WA, 11-25-18
Media Island & Shawna Hawk
Shawna Hawk is a Black Power movement builder, a Mother, a Healer and a catalyst for social change. She is creating radical intersectional community in Olympia by transforming a space that has long been a stronghold of white cis male activism – Media Island International – into a space for Women of Color to do healing, activism, art and movement building, and to lift each other up with fierceness and love.
Olympia, which is both the state capitol and a college town, is a small city of approximately 50,000 people, with over 80% of the population identifying as white. Like any white-dominated city, no matter how “liberal” or “progressive” it thinks it is, Olympia is full of unchecked racism. Media Island International (mediaisland.org), founded in 1984, is a house and organization in downtown Olympia that hosts a meeting space, radio station, and library/archives. Their website says that Media Island is “a resource and networking center for culturally diverse people of all ages, groups and movements working for social, racial, economic, and ecological justice, sustainability and peace” (the term “racial” in that statement was only recently added by Shawna). However, despite their intention of being inclusive, their board and other long-term leadership have been almost exclusively middle-aged white straight cis-men, which has kept the energy in the building and their reputation in the community somewhat stagnant. Shawna Hawk is changing all that.
Shawna Hawk & Media Island house donated to and for the Public’s use, KOWA 106.5 fmShawna is a Black Woman who experienced Poverty and spent time in the foster system, and who raised three kids as a single working Mother. When her twin daughters came to Olympia to look into The Evergreen State College’s film program, Shawna followed. She had already met all of her academic goals, but she decided to get another Bachelor’s degree, post-Masters Degree, on top of two AAs and a couple other BAs, as what Shawna calls a re-fresh, a “trajectory change.” She had always been goal-driven by academics in an effort to fuel her career, but had become disillusioned.
“When I saw that my Masters Degree didn’t get me beyond any of the white women that were hoarding all the power and the jobs, with lesser degrees and experience, that’s when my bubble got burst,” Shawna says. “You know, you jump through all the hoops and you see that the privilege is what wins. Not your paper. I had to just be happy with myself and be happy that, ‘Damn, I did that! I raised three kids. I did my job.’ I look back now and I’m like ‘how the hell did I do that?!’”
At Evergreen, Shawna pursued the things that called to her heart and her sense of Justice. She hosted the show Vibrational Rising at KAOS, the community radio station on campus, and was bringing groundbreaking Black artists and academics to speak and perform. At one point, about five years ago, she accompanied a guest hip hop artist to the house where he was staying, which turned out to be Media Island. She went inside and looked around. She saw that Media Island had a radio station and a social justice library. She saw that the space didn’t look very cared for, but the books looked diverse. She saw a poster with young Black girls on it. She became interested.
Not long after this introduction, Shawna was voted in as the KOWA 106.5 FM Station Manager at Media Island. Later, she was voted on to the Board of Directors, where she was the only Woman, the only Person of Color, and the only Black person. Her leadership and involvement at Media Island have blossomed over the past four years, creating the Women of Color in Leadership Movement, hosting monthly POC-only healing spaces, brunches and retreats, offering Men’s Healing Space for addressing toxic masculinity and continuing her radio show Vibrational Rising as Lady Hawk. Shawna’s work and leadership, and even her impact on the physical space of the building, is obvious. She is bringing the organization alive. But this feels threatening to white men who cling to their positions of power and stronghold over the organization. Media Island is in a unique position to actually DO what its mission has been saying for all these years. There is an opportunity to literally dismantle patriarchy and white supremacy in this one microcosm, and to femmifest, rather than manifest, the hand-me-down privilege fest.“The house that is Media Island International was donated by one white man of privilege to another white man of privilege. So that white man got a chance to bring on his team, to do his own thing. No one was dictating to him how he had to do that. He made that decision on his own,” says Shawna Hawk.Shawna says that white people often bring an energy that’s like “Mine!” especially as Shawna becomes more established and transforms the space at Media Island. They see what she’s done, and they want it. White men tend to hide behind self-righteousness, while white Women refuse to take direction from a Black Woman, revealing hatred and jealousy with historic roots.“Me as an African American Woman, our people were being snatched from our homes in Africa, and brought here. Too often times being evicted from places, whether it be violently or sneakily through foreclosures or paperwork. Having our homes stolen, burnt, torched. Being a part of Media Island, and having it be in a house, where a dominant white male owns a piece of property…” Shawna explains.“Often you hear stories about all-Black towns being destroyed by neighboring white communities who were jealous of what had been built. Not because they had so much, but because they worked so hard for it! So you have Black communities with people who know how to build houses because they had to build all the houses when they were in slavery. Then you (whites) get all mad because they (Blacks) had the skills to build their own house, a better house than y’alls, cuz y’all didn’t know how to do it.”White people of Olympia can support Shawna, and the work of Women of Color, by being consistent, by showing up when they say they’re going to, and by following through.“We need the constant support of the majority class,” says Shawna, “and for people to put their walk and their action where their talk is. It seems like there’s some eye-opening thing happening where white folks are realizing that yes, racism exists in Olympia. Cuz for many, the focus was on the environment. You can’t do Environmental Justice without doing Racial Justice! I know not to take beautiful clear skies and crisp drinking water and think that I can be unaware… I’m on my guard no matter where I am. People are gonna be people no matter where you go.”The fact that white people in Olympia and the United States are finally getting the message that RACISM EXISTS is something that Shawna finds hopeful. Shawna sees and feels a sense of urgency for white people to go deep with The Work, to drop that inherent sense of entitlement, and turn over power, unhoard the resources. She loves it when volunteers make themselves available to do projects, like working on the garden, painting, being a part of the change.“Each time a person walks in and says ‘I like the feel of it in here, oh my god you’ve done such a good job’ – that feeds me! We’re repainting it right now and that feeds me, I don’t even have words for it right now. I get excited about things around the house, and I talk to the current founder who’s shared that he’s on his way out, and he’s like ‘I really don’t care.’ I guess I must care too much because I’m working here as many hours as I can, you know?”History keeps repeating itself, and the men who are sad to lose their clubhouse are lashing out at Shawna and her leadership. However, there is an opportunity to interrupt that cycle at Media Island in Olympia, WA. This can serve as an example of Reparations, of transformative racial justice, at this one house, with this one organization and this one Black Woman. The white men at Media Island are not “letting Shawna” do this work, she IS doing it. Shawna is in Leadership and Media Island is moving out of the old regime to make way for new energy, for that of Divine Feminine, as a Trans-inclusive Women and Community space where especially Women of Color and survivors feel safe, and the divine masculine is held in balance with its counterparts. This is part of a bigger transition that the world is going through, and the pushback is growing pains.To fuel her passion, Shawna stays grounded in the African spiritual practices of Ifa, the study of nature, meditation, dance, music, song, drumming and especially Ancestor worship and engagement with her Spirit Guides.“African Americans who came over with the slave trade, we had to keep our practices hidden, we had everything stripped away. So we had to be really creative with our spiritual practice and rituals,” Shawna explains. “Wherever I go they go with me, wherever I go I look for my Ancestors and Spirit Guides in the trees, in the energy of the space.”
Lisa Ganser is a self described white, Disabled, genderqueer artist and activist living in Olympia, WA on stolen Squaxin, Chehalis and Nisqually land. They are a sidewalk chalker, a copwatcher, a Poverty Scholar and the Daughter of a Momma named Sam.
Hawk-v-Walker Hysterectomy UHS 18-254 (11-30-18)
Oympia, WA (11-30-18) — Courtroom audio in this classic case of a Black supremacist attacking a homeless white male journalist’s write to publish without prior restraint begins @ 3:30.
This video is about Hawk-v-Walker UHS 18-254 in Thurston District Court on 11-30-18. It involves Shawna Hawk, drama queen in chief, aided & abetted by Jimmy Mateson, successfully misappropriating donated assets (a downtown Olympia house adjacent to the public library given to MI for PUBLIC use) for their own unjust personal enrichment via a sham 501(c)3 non-profit corporation (Media Island).
This video contains the complete audio of the 11-30-18 trial/hearing on the matter filed by Shawna Hawk in an effort to shut Dana Walker up by attempting to manipulate the court into issuing a prior restraint against Dana’s continued publication of the Thunderbolt magazine wherein he continues to criticize their blatant sexist racism and theft of the commons by politicizing & misappropriating it.
Contemporary Social =ity: #Me2 Witch Hunt Intersectionality Point System
Censoring Meghan Murphy, Radical Feminist
DEPLATFORMING
Evergreen’s Educational Model (Pt.1 of Weinstein / Heying Interview)
Evaluating Evergreen (Pt.2 of Weinstein / Heying Interview)
Evergreen Madness: Why Bret Weinstein Left
“You Are NOT Oppressed” Dave Rubin Calmly Destroys a Crazed Hyper-Victim
The above videos and material illustrate the emasculating of TESC and how it has evolved from an academic institution of higher learning into a college of indoctrination through intimidation, right down to the bat wielding students and anarchists. Its demise was achieved through the politicization of and misappropriation of it, i.e. the commons. The so called SJW’s and non-playable characters consist largely of infectious hyperbolic ‘victim’ drama queens like Shawna Hawk, Lisa Ganser, and EB Webb who encourage others to drink the same Kool-Aid.
Evergreen, once a shield against ignorance has become a highway for delivering it wholesale, a torrent of indoctrination, and a dagger pointed at the heart of the community. It has served to make the pernicious contemporary organization/administration of the likes of Medias Island and the Olympia Food Co-op, once 501(c)3’s owned/dedicated to the community, cancers upon it, the very antithesis of ‘social justice’.
Anyone truly committed to fighting sexism, anarchy, racism, bigotry, and the theft of the commons will seek the removal of TESC’s president Bridges and Media Island’s Shawna Hawk by any means possible. Their harm to Olympia is not limited to MI and the Co-op, but infects the very seat of government and the courts. Their false narrative and manipulative use of ‘intersectional’ ideology has given rise to a false sense of entitlement [They like to characterize the theft as ‘reparations’.] by the very people who deserve it the least. Shawna claims to have 2 master’s degrees, though you wouldn’t know it from the strength of her writing–ALL at PUBLIC EXPENSE. Still, she wears her ‘victimhood’ like a flag.
TESC should be defunded and converted to a campus/shelter for the homeless, instead of one for maladroit intemperate dilettantes. Ever fewer are willing to attend Evergreen in any event for all the above reasons.
“Oh, thanks for the bat, dad, but I’m planning on attending TESC this spring instead of baseball camp.”
“That’s why I got it for you, son.”
The Media Island house should be returned to the public sans Shawna Hawk, the reason it was donated in the first place, not to support Shawna or playboy James Mateson. It has become an exclusive bastion for the most toxic gender benders and pernicious drama queens set on the goal of further indoctrinating children into their dysphoria via, in part, funding from Olympia’s CYS. This would provide a sinecure Shawna can continue to milk indefinitely.
The Olympia Food Co-op continues to be part of this lethal mix by bullying Dana Walker, a homeless community journalist of long standing from even selling newspapers despite his recent courtroom victory upholding his right to publish.
Some things are worth fighting for. Among them are our rights and freedoms which must routinely be exercised or we WILL lose them. Join David So Happy’s dream and take back what is rightfully the public’s: The Commons by any means necessary!
TESC SJW’s GO BESERK
Got an itch to assault someone? TESC’s the ticket–a thug’s paradise.
Indeed! Had the professor who authored the above video but known, she could have said the same things about Dana, Rick Fellows, Tom Nogler, Bruce Wilkinson, et ux who were so eager to elect a sexist racist virulently bigoted black Drama Queen to the Media Island board of directors. Bon Apetit mon amis!
This clip is wonderful. Featuring tap dancing legends Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr. (64 years old), and Harold Nicholas (68 years old) in TAP (1989). Don't tell these old men their legs are gone! <3 <3 <3
